‘You will tell him that he has insulted the Hun people. You will tell him that his armies have assaulted and slaughtered our innocents. They have trampled on the grave-mounds of our ancient kings, they have looted our burial grounds.’ The warlord’s voice grated with cold anger. ‘And you will say to the emperor these words from me:
‘“If you ignore me, oppose me or attempt to deceive me, I will destroy you. If you do not admit your guilt in regard to the descration of our burial mounds and the massacre of our people, I will destroy you.”’
‘My lord,’ stammered the messenger, ‘I cannot say these words in person to His Divine Majesty. His anger will be terrible.’
‘His anger will be nothing to mine. Say them. Say them just as I said them to you, word for word. The emperor in his perfumed palace will hear you. He will not destroy you, but if you fail me I will destroy you and your seed for ever. Just as I will destroy him and his empire: every wall, every stone, every man, woman and child left within. Understand me. Look into my eyes. Do I look to you like a liar?’
The priest could not speak.
‘Say to the emperor that if he does not render to me half his empire by way of recompense, I will destroy him.’
‘Half… the empire?’
‘Your ears work well. Of course, I will destroy him anyway, but he need not know that yet. And you can add for him the old Roman motto “ Nemo me impune lacessit – no man insults me with impunity.” Suitable, no?’
The bishop said nothing.
‘I will know if and when you have delivered this message in full, and correctly. If you do, you may return here and be reunited with your family. And then, if you have any sense, you will flee far from this empire doomed to fall. If you do not return – in twenty days – your family will be crucified, the whore and the children both.’
The bishop groaned.
The warlord struck him. He reeled backwards. With his hands tied behind his back he could not wipe his mouth so he licked and leaned aside and spat the blood that welled from his split lip.
The warlord’s voice grew fiercer. ‘How often in your life have you had a chance to redeem your entire family from death by a single act of great bravery? Never. Am I right? Of course I am. You are a provincial priest of a mean frontier diocese. Your family were mere yeoman farmers, slow sons of the soil with clay for blood.’
He looked away.
‘You should go now. Naissus is two days distant, and the capital another ten. So you will need to hurry to be back here in twenty days and collect your prize.’ He laid his hand on the man’s shaking shoulder, almost gentle again. ‘You will need to ride fast. Understand?’
The bishop controlled himself and nodded.
The warlord turned to his warriors. ‘Find him a horse.’
As he departed, the priest looked back. ‘My lord, I still do not know what name I should give.’
‘Attila. My name is Attila.’
Orestes watched him at the doorway to the tent. Great Tanjou. He remembered the day when the two of them had come back to the camp of the Huns, a small and humbled people, before Attila took them in his fists and remade them. And when Attila dug into the grave-mound, grubbing into the very bones of his father, Mundzuk, with a common spade. Now he preached the desecration of the Hun grave-mounds as a pretext for war. Yet Attila was no hypocrite. That was not the word.
One law for the lion and the ox is oppression. That was Attila’s creed, or something like it.
Attila said, ‘Let them use their own to pass on messages of disaster, to issue threats to their emperor.’ He took his place cross-legged at the fireside. ‘Let them use their own cursus to pass on my words.’
Orestes murmured, ‘Like the time we let those Turcoman bandits steal our gold. Heavy wagons of Chinese gold.’
An old warrior with long, greying hair regarded him. It was Chanat. ‘Tell the tale.’
Orestes smiled thinly. ‘We let them drag it over mountain passes, across fast-flowing rivers on rafts, across parched gravel deserts. A terrible journey back to their steppeland home. We trailed them all the way. They never knew. And when they had kindly transported all that Chinese gold for us, safely back to the northern steppes, we fell on them by night and slew them all.’
‘And took back your gold?’
Orestes nodded. ‘And took back our gold.’
Chanat munched happily on his leg of mutton. He liked this story. ‘Will this emperor indeed render up to us half his empire? Is he such a woman? They say he wears perfume, and boots studded with pearls.’
‘I don’t doubt he does,’ said Attila. ‘But as for handing over half his empire, if he does not, I will destroy him. And if he does,’ he smiled, ‘well, I will destroy him anyway. And then… Rome.’
‘And then…?’
‘Ah. Then.’
They fell silent. Chanat drank. Memories of China.
‘Whatever else he does, Theodosius will call on the West for aid,’ said Attila. ‘But no aid will come.’
Orestes frowned. ‘The Roman boy, this Master-General, Aetius.. .’
‘I remember him. He would ride to the rescue of any fallen damsel, even Theodosius. But he will not come. I have other plans. Constantinople has strong walls, but the strongest legions remain in the West. Aetius’ own legions are the finest. We could take on both empires at once, but it is easier to divide and rule, as the Romans used to say when they colonised new lands. Divide and destroy, I say.
‘We concentrate first on the East. Soon enough, Theodosius will send out a message by sea to Ravenna. Also to his field army at Marcianopolis, and perhaps to the legionary forts at Sirmium and Singidunum to attack our flank. Such messages will be… disrupted.’
‘At sea?’
‘The Vandals are masters of much of the Mediterranean now. King Genseric.’
Orestes stared. ‘One of the brothers also held hostage in Rome in your boyhood.’
‘With his sleek ships in that fine harbour of captured Carthage. What irony there.’
‘He is your ally now? I did not know this.’
‘He is not my ally, he is my servant.’ Attila grinned. ‘But he does not know this.’ He took a deep draught of koumiss.
‘You should sleep,’ said Orestes. He had been awake all night, talking, the bloodlust of Margus still coursing in his veins.
Attila ignored him. Orestes laid his hand on his shoulder. No other man could have done this. Attila shrugged him off.
Finally he said, ‘Such dreams I have nowadays. You have no idea. Such dreams…’
‘Such dreams,’ echoed Little Bird from the back of the tent, shaking his head sorrowfully.
Orestes did not know if they were good dreams or bad, if his friend awoke in the cold midnight raging with dreams of world conquest or trembling from other visions altogether.
‘I do not sleep,’ said Attila. ‘I cannot sleep.’
Two more warriors stepped into the tent, Aladar, son of Chanat, and one of the Kutrigur Huns.
‘Another of the Chosen Men is dead,’ said Aladar.
The Kutrigur warrior nodded. ‘You seek the Lord Bela. I saw him go down into the water. One of the Romans, a brute of a man, fell on him and dragged him off the bridge, drowned him.’
Attila gazed at the messenger. First eager Yesukai, doomed to die young. Now Bela, one of the four steadfast brothers.
The king said not a word, made not a sound, but in a single, explosive movement smashed his wooden cup to the ground. Little Bird whimpered. No one else moved.
‘His body?’
‘Never found.’
Attila’s eyes searched the ground splashed with koumiss, muttering. ‘Drowned. What an end for my warrior Bela.’
Bela of the bull-neck and the bull-torso. The strong and silent, slow-witted, immovable Bela. Loyal unto death, like all his Chosen Men.
Chanat said, ‘The brothers will have their revenge, my lord.’
‘I don’t doubt it,’ growled Attila.
Aladar took a deep breath. ‘And Candac is also gone.’
Clever, cautious, round-faced Candac.